Antimail
Dear Mailers:
The purpose of themail is to be about “life, government, or
politics in the District of Columbia,” as the sign-off item at the end
of each issue says. I certainly don’t want themail to become
self-referential, filled with messages that comment only on themail
itself. Therefore, I’ll resist the temptation to reply a second time
to criticisms of themail below by Bill Coe, Peter Turner, and Larry
Seftor.
I will write, however, about how debates about political and public
issues are carried out in democracies. Strong champions of particular
politicians or policies point out all the good things about them; strong
critics of those politicians and policies point out all the bad things
about them; and the majority of people, who are in the middle,
undecided, or don’t have strong opinions about those politicians or
policies, evaluate the partisans’ arguments and make their own
decisions. Coe, Turner, and Seftor are strong champions of Mayor Fenty,
his school takeover plan, and his chosen Chancellor, Ms. Rhee. That’s
fine by me and, since themail is an open forum, they are free to use it
to sing their praises. They are out of bounds, however, when they demand
that there be no criticism of Mayor Fenty, his school takeover, or
Chancellor Rhee, or when they try to insist upon unstinting and
unrelieved praise of them.
I have not been critical of the mayoral takeover of the schools
because I applauded the performance of the Board of Education, as Mr.
Turner inaccurately charges. No one who has actually read what I wrote
about the Board over the years would believe that. On the contrary, I
have often been critical of the Board’s actions and inaction. What I
have supported is the principle of citizens’ democratic control of the
schools through a directly elected Board. It’s simple: when a
democratically elected body doesn’t perform well, the remedy is not to
dissolve that body, but for the citizens to exercise their ultimate
supervisory role and to elect new and different members to it. If that
weren't true, Congress should have dissolved DC's entire home rule
government in the 1990's, instead of appointing a temporary Control
Board. Similarly, I have never expressed “an ugly desire for the mayor’s
new Chancellor, Ms. Rhee, to fail,” as Mr. Coe maliciously fantasizes.
On the contrary, I have always expressed the hope that she would
succeed, but that doesn’t mean that I, or anyone, should refrain
completely from judging her performance.
Every new administration in this city has thought early on that
Dorothy and I should support it uncritically, because each new
administration pictured itself as reformers, as the good guys, in
contrast to the corrupt bad guys in the administration it replaced. But
each new administration, instead of eliminating back-office, closed-door
deals, has done those deals with its friends, instead of with the
friends of the previous administration. That isn’t reform; it’s just
performing the same play with a different cast. Dorothy and I have
always hoped for the best from new administrations and new
councilmembers, and viewed them with no partisan or personal animus. But
that doesn’t mean that we have given or will give anyone a free pass,
or refrain from exposing them when they make mistakes or do worse.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Why Fire the Chief Engineer?
Ronni Glaser, ronni_glaser@msn.com
I've been traveling and maybe this has been covered and I missed it,
but I just heard the city let John Deatrick go as Chief Engineer.
Anybody have any insight into this? Seems to me Mr. Deatrick did more to
to reform the image of DDOT as a professional design and construction
organization than anyone in memory.
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DC Disparity and Fiscal Incompetence
Dennis Moore, dennis@dcindependents.org
The headline blasts the newest revelation that many of us already
know and live as a reality in the District: “Wealth gap widens as
whites hit $89K, blacks take in $34K” (http://www.examiner.com/a-905206~Wealth_gap_widens_as_whites_hit__89K__blacks_take_in__34K.html).
Of course, as our city’s fiscal foundation continues to sink in debt
and more families quietly flee, our mayor and DC council grin, spin, and
photo-op their way through another year of third-rate governance. We, as
supported by recent data from the US Census Bureau, are not amused.
Anyone who hasn’t made the connection between the ongoing fiscal
incompetence, brain-dead District governance, act-like-you-know
leadership, and the true economic state of DC is either insane or
purposely in denial. A budget busting baseball stadium, a failing
convention center, more condos, and the usual slate of shortsighted
economic initiatives that benefit the few over the many are coming home
to roost. Once again our dirty socioeconomic laundry is hanging high for
all to see. The dream of a family-friendly city is a genuine nightmare
for nearly 80 percent of D.C. residents, according to the report.
Promises made are often promises never kept by most of the
taxpayer-funded incompetents we keep electing. As more of us become
economically bruised and broken, the able among us leave our school
system, shop more outside the District, seek jobs there, and eventually
move out altogether. That’s the true tale of our city, and our elected
local officials are the authors.
Urban Economics 101: supporting and expanding a mixed-income family
friendly city generates exponential revenue and other socioeconomic
benefits that strengthen the city’s fiscal foundation. The next time
you stroll DC after the suburban commuters and tourists have left for
the day, beyond the occasional sound of gunfire, ask why does so much of
our city have this dead-dull quiet feeling in the late afternoon and
weekends. Where have all the families, rhythm, energy and future of the
city gone? According to the US Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/p60-233.pdf)
the answers are in the better-governed counties of Maryland, Virginia,
and beyond.
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School Enrollment and School Facilities
Kevin Morison, Morisonfamily@starpower.net
Like Len Sullivan (“The New School Team: Good on Photo Ops, but
Avoiding the First Order Terms?,” themail, August 26), I, too, am very
interested to see what the enrollment figures will be for DCPS this
year. Beyond the overall total, however, I am also eager to see the
distribution of exactly where those children are enrolled. Comparing the
total enrollment figures with the total number of school buildings
citywide is useful to a point, but it can also mask some interesting and
important trends at the neighborhood level. In upper Northwest the
elementary schools are literally bursting at the seams. To accommodate
the influx of students, both Lafayette and Murch added “mobile
classrooms” (trailers) this fall, something that Janney did a few
years ago and still has. My point is this: in looking at the facilities
needs of DCPS, Mr. Lew and his team need to analyze and carefully
consider these localized trends.
Regardless of who is in charge at North Capitol Street, the public
schools in upper Northwest have succeeded academically and will likely
continue to succeed. Those schools have the test scores — and, I
believe, the enrollment figures — to prove that. My question: will the
new DCPS leadership display the political will to expand the schools in
those parts of town where enrollment is skyrocketing, while "right
sizing" in neighborhoods where enrollment continues to decline?
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Water Bills Aren’t Washed Up
James Treworgy, jamietree@yahoo.com
Take a look at the detail of your bill. Water is billed in units
called CCFs. A CCF is 100 cubic feet or 748 gallons. This is a lot of
water. In any given single month, a residential user probably only goes
through somewhere between two and three CCFs.
Since the meter is always read in whole units, you will frequently
get bills that are identical or different by the cost of a single unit.
Assuming you use about the same amount of water each month, whether you
get billed for x or y units just depends on how close to the threshold
of the next unit you were at the time the reading was taken. So stop
hanging WASA out to dry — there’s nothing fishy going on here.
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Affordable Housing the Fenty Way
Roy R. Stewart, Jr., roy.stewart2@verizon.net
We often hear Mayor Fenty speak of affordable housing, but we do not
know what affordable housing is according to Fenty.
Every time I attempt to get the Fenty administration to define for me
what its concept of affordable housing is, all I get back is a brief
letter stating: to make more housing available to all Washingtonians.
This does not answer the question.
Is the phrase “affordable housing” just a politically correct and
convenient catch phrase for Fenty, just as "smart growth" and
others are?
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Allow me to commend the comments made by Messrs. Nevitt and Seftor in
themail of August 27. They are correct in fact as well as opinion, and I
second their emotion.
It has long been evident to me that Mr. Imhoff can’t get past his
disappointment over Mayor Fenty’s takeover of DC’s schools. Imhoff
has dropped all pretense of doing journalism and begun expressing an
ugly desire for the mayor’s new Chancellor, Ms. Rhee, to fail. The
criminal failures of the previous school-governance system do not move
him to consider the value of a wholly new approach — nor apparently do
the catastrophic results, should the mayor’s management be no better.
He just keeps lobbing brickbats — to the dismay of any fair-minded
person with a material stake in the success of DC’s public schools.
Until lately, all this was merely unhelpful and wrongheaded. When,
however, themail suggests that local voters should not participate in
elections which its editor happens to think are unimportant, then this
publication moves to the fringe and makes itself truly irrelevant. I
will continue to receive and read themail, because for me it’s a
source of information and some amusement, but I see no way a serious
reader can take seriously what its publicists have to say.
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I continue to be astonished at the lack of recognition by the editors
of this list of the enormous incompetence (or whatever you may call it)
on the part of the DC school board in allowing the schools of this city
to deteriorate to the extent they have with one of the highest per
student spending levels in the country. As August 27’s Washington
Post editorial states: “The District’s public schools open their
doors today after an unprecedented summer of repairs. Improvements have
been made in the condition of many buildings, and city officials should
be applauded. It’s difficult, though, to forget the incompetence and
neglect that led to the disgraceful state of the schools — or to
overlook the hard reality that much more work still needs to be done”
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/26/AR2007082600971.html].
In this list for the past I lost count how many issues, Mayor Fenty,
Michelle Rhee, Allen Lew, and anyone else connected with the current
administration has been endlessly berated for their efforts. As the Post
reports, Allen Lew has led the effort to repair 71 of the system’s 141
schools and athletic fields at a cost of around $80 million. The
editorial states., “[O]ne principal was near tears in surveying the
new look of his school is powerful testimony to the hurts inflicted by
decrepit surroundings. It’s wonderful that some children finally will
be going to schools that have working water fountains and toilets but a
disgrace that such basics were absent so long.”
It is now apparent that the DC school board was at best ineffective
and at worst almost criminally incompetent, considering the school
system’s well documented large budget and astonishingly high failure
and dropout rates. The one-sided ranting on this list demonizing the
District’s leaders would be easier to listen to if it were more (dare
I say) balanced in weighing the positive achievements with other aspects
that clearly deserve people’s attention.
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Gary Applies the Wrong Standard
Larry Seftor, Ward 3, larry underscore seftor .them757 at
zoemail.net
Gary, I’m not suggesting that Michelle Rhee’s performance should
not be evaluated. However, as one who has both worked as a senior
professional and monitored the work of other senior professionals, I can
assure you that you are applying the wrong methodology. You suggest that
Mr. Rhee’s supervisors (apparently including yourself) should “tell
(Ms. Rhee) as early as possible when (she) make(s) a mistake or do(es)
something wrong.” This approach certainly applies to lower level staff
who have specific duties. Senior professionals, on the other hand, are
evaluated on whether they meet established goals, within an established
time frame, within established parameters (such as the obvious one that
all actions must be legal and ethical). There is certainly a role for
public discourse about the goals, time frames, and parameters (such as
budget) established for Ms. Rhee. However, there should be no public
debate about what she did this morning to get there. The point of my
posting is that too little time has passed to perform an evaluation of
Ms. Rhee’s performance. Carping, while perhaps fun for the carper, is
just diverting Ms. Rhee’s attention from the job at hand.
The Post, in a story about UDC this week, stated that 80
percent of the entering class “need remedial math, reading or both
when they enter as freshmen.” If these represent the college-bound
students from DC schools, then the percentage of graduates who are
functionally uneducated is higher than 80 percent. This is not Michelle
Rhee’s fault. It is the fault of you, Gary, and me, and everyone else
who is part of the DC status quo. She was brought in as an agent of
change and, by definition, she is going to do things that people are not
going to like. Given the failing performance of the school system, we
should all get out of her way.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
The DC Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking (DISB) and the
Business Division of the DC Public Library present All About Credit, a
seminar led by a financial advisor who will discuss the keys to using
credit wisely, first-time credit, women and credit, improving your
credit score and what you should know before applying for a credit card.
Come out this Thursday, August 30, at 3 p.m. at the Martin Luther King,
Jr., Memorial Library, 901 G Street, NW, Main Hall. For more questions,
call 727-1171 or 442-7822.
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Hot Movie Hits, September 4-25
Randi Blank, randi.blank@dc.gov
Tuesdays, September 4-25, 6:00 p.m., Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Memorial Library, 901 G Street, NW, Room A-5. Hot movie hits. September
4, The Fifth Element (1997), Rated PG-13; September 11, Disturbia
(2007), Rated PG-13; September 18, Wild Hogs (2007), Rated PG-13; and
September 25, Blades of Glory (2007), Rated PG-13.
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CLASSIFIEDS — RECOMMENDATIONS
I need suggestions or recommendations for service for data recovery
for a Mac-formatted external hard drive; the hard drive is unrecognized
or corrupt. This is important for a young filmmaker. Much smaller PC
problem: the PC on-off button is broken.
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